Alan Southward

Nov 30 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS generally accepted that the profoundly deaf man was hot on scallops, and his understanding of the taxonomy of barnacles and sea sponges remains much admired in those circles, where marine biologists gather to examine the contents of their sieves.

And when he and his devoted wife found two new species of pogonophora (long worms) wiggling with enviable contentment in upright tubes of protein and chitin, the news was greeted with approving nods.

But much of Alan Southward’s work would have been of specialist interest only, had his investigations and explorations not suggested the climate was changing the marine ecosystems – providing the scientific community with crucial evidence about global warming. So his studies have been very important to the world’s future.

At a more homely level, he was a kind and humorous man, white-haired and bushy-browed, who devoted his immense intellect to discovering more about simple creatures, which, though unseen and unsung, experience the precious gift of life on Earth.

And the Earth is a little poorer for the going of a man who cared so much about the secret of the oceans.

Southward, son of a shipfitter, attended Liverpool Collegiate. Meningitis left him deaf, but an ability to lip-read helped him to pass the School Certificate. He entered Liverpool University and in 1948 gained a first-class honours degree in zoology.

Three years later, at the Marine Biological Station at Port Erin on the Isle of Man, he completed his PhD on the intertidal ecology of limpets and barnacles.

While there, he met and married Eve Southward, scientist and soulmate, who helped him communicate his ideas and added many of her own. They wrote books, articles and journals together.

Their expertise came to the fore in the aftermath of the Torrey Canyon oil spill disaster of 1967, which contaminated beaches in Cornwall. By then, Southward was working in the laboratories of the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth.

He came to realise that the detergents and dispersants used were more harmful to wildlife than the oil. This thinking has helped in tackling subsequent oil disasters.

More recently, Southward has been monitoring changes in sea temperatures. His researches showed that in the 1920s, cold-water herring and plankton had been replaced by warm-water pilchards and plankton.

Today’s rising temperatures have produced similar results.

Professor Alan Southward, scientist; born April 17, 1928, died October 27, 2007.